Questioning everything

After School Satan Club?

“It’s important that children be given an opportunity to realize that the evangelical materials now creeping into their schools are representative of but one religious opinion amongst many. While the Good News Clubs focus on indoctrination, instilling them with a fear of Hell and God’s wrath, After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us. We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.”-The after school satan club

In 2011, the Good News Club (evangelism club) were in an astonishing 5% of USA’s schools. The combat to this blatant psychological abuse of indoctrination? After School Satan Clubs are being started by The Satanic Temple in an effort to bring back logic and rationality. In 1984, congress passed the equal access act-which meant the government couldn’t stop the formation of after-school Bible clubs at public (state in Australia) schools but now means that Satanists (atheists) can implement their ‘religion’ into the schools.

The Satanic Temple

It is the position of The Satanic Temple that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition. As such, we do not promote a belief in a personal Satan. To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions. The Satanist should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things. Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse-The Satanic Temple.

The Satanic Temple-the perpetrator behind the ASSC is a religion devoted to science, logic and reasoning and are not actual satan worshippers but people who believe in the freedom of will and the fact that their shouldn’t be just one monolithic voice in the religion community. Satanists follow 7 tenets:

One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego your own.Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.Materially, we believe in nothing that is not demonstrably true, and hold to even those beliefs with an understanding that they, too, must remain open to revision in the light of new scientific understandings. (Taken from here)

The purpose of TST Satanism is to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject evil authority, promote practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will. In a way TST Satanism is a lot like Buddhism.

Why Satan?

“Darkness is just light turned inside out.” ― Beelzebub

Satan in Satanism is typically stylized as an advocate of free inquiry and free will. ‘It is the position of The Satanic Temple that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition. As such, we do not promote a belief in a personal Satan’ reads the FAQ. Satanism is alternatively a symbol of ‘unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer’.

What do kids learn at the ASSC?

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

The after school satan club is focused on rationality, science and a anti-superstitious world view. The After School Satan Clubs has announced it will incorporate games, projects, and thinking that help children understand how we know what we know about our world and our universe in a secular manner. The ASSC is in short a science club with satan as its mascot and symbolic inspiration.

But is it legal?

Good News Club v Milford Central held that when a government operates a “limited public forum,” ( a government-owned property that is open to public expression and assembly) and it may not discriminate against speech that takes place within that forum on the basis of the viewpoint it expresses and in the Good New Club case: Evangelism. In an unlikely twist, the same case that helped distribute religion will now spread free-thinking and rationality.

Where?

After school satan clubs are being offered at these schools
Still Elementary School
Chase Street Elementary
C. A. Weis Elementary School
Nehalem Elementary School
Vista Elementary School
Centennial Elementary School
Watkins Elementary School
Springfield Public Schools
Roskruge Bilingual
Bradbury Heights Elementary. Find out more here.

Conclusion

The ultimate goal of The After School Satan Club is to have one in every school where a Good News Club is or other religious groups in order to fight to ensure that plurality and true religious freedom are respected. As it is illegal for the schools to discriminate against religions (limited public form), After School Satan Clubs cannot be denied wherever religious clubs, operate since it being illegal.

Although the presence of Satanism is seen by the majority of christianity as evil and blasphemy but it will no doubt promote a different and logical viewpoint to the usual religious clubs and will attract interestec many atheist or satanic parents.